Broadening Horizons
by Tare-Bear
Summary: "There was a man," Peeta says, hurriedly, almost slurred into incoherency. Blood beads down his face. Glimmering white dust litters his hair and shoulders, shards of glass gathered below him and scattered around the hall. At my feet sits a slightly crumpled lampshade. A lamp; he hit Peeta with a lamp. *AU. Post-MJ. Their adventure isn't over yet.
1. Chapter One

Chapter One

I wake the instant Peeta sits up. A chill crawls up my legs where his is no longer pressed into mine and his arms slip from my waist. Springs creak underneath his weight. Though groggy, my hand shoots out and curls around his elbow on instinct.

"Where.."

"The baby," he says, and I notice the sound of our scrawling daughter across the hall.

I sit up, wide awake. I don't know how Peeta does it. How he wakes the very moment she gives her first squeak of discontent. How he hears her when he's dead asleep, or when he's two houses away, when he's at the bakery and I can't get her to calm for the life of myself. Part of me is envious, to be so assured in what he is doing, and the other is irritated at how natural it seems to come to him. But most of all I'm grateful. I would be lying if I said I could have shouldered the parenting burden all on my own.

Leaning back on an elbow, I watch Peeta pull on a shirt and fumble to attach his prosthetic leg. After much yawning and stretching, he stands and lumbers tiredly to the hall. Once, I might of followed him and stood uselessly behind his shoulder as he rocked and cooed at the distraught bundle in his arms. Now I know better. Neither need me.

I sigh, flop against his side of the bed, and close my eyes. Except dream isn't there to greet me. I won't sleep. I can't sleep when he's not here with me. Especially not when Dandelion is crying.

So I wait.

I listen, and twist futilely in the sheets to find some sort of comfort. Dani has a strong set of lungs for a sixteen month old girl. In fact as the minutes drag by her crying seems to blur into a scream, high and thin, and I sit up again, ruffled and disturbed by the sound. Most nights she quiets moments after Peeta picks her up. Instead of the sound of my husband's soft voice and my daughter's gurgled reply, there is a slam, a yelp, and the shatter of glass piercing the air.

"Peeta!" I call out. The screaming peaks. I'm on my feet in an instant, uncaring of my lack of pants and the tangled mass of my hair as I slip out into the dark hallway.

I stall in horror at the sight of Peeta slumped against the door of Dani's bedroom, attempting to barge it open with his shoulder. "There was a man," Peeta says, hurriedly, almost slurred into incoherency. Blood beads down his face. Glimmering white dust litters his hair and shoulders, shards of glass gathered at his feet and scattered around the hall. At my feet sits a slightly crumpled lampshade. A lamp; he hit Peeta with a lamp.

I don't know what grips me worse; panic or anger. Either way, I throw myself into a mode of such frantics that I shove Peeta out of my way, draw the knife I keep in the draw of the hallway table and wedge it between the door and the frame. The lock doesn't budge, no matter how much I rattle and pry. Turning, I search Peeta's face. He's awake, but the blow to his head has left him bleary. "Don't let him out this way," I snap, and then I streak down the hall, ravishing my feet in the glass, throwing myself down the stairs two at a time.

The knife is still in my hand, knuckles white with grip.

Outside the night is bitterly cold. The grass is damp and stiff beneath my slashed feet. Air bites the flesh of my bare thighs and nose, whipping hair into my face and around, as a wavering, slithering black veil. I know exactly which window is my daughter's. I'm not too late. The man is just recovering from the drop he took off the front porch's overhang.

In the dim moonlight, he's painted silver, and I can scarcely see the shape of my screaming daughter tucked underneath his coat.

I don't even think about it. Perhaps it's the two Hunger Games that I have underneath my belt, or my experience in the war, or merely because that is my daughter he is taking and it was my husband whom he attacked and it was my house he has infiltrated. No means of peace or negotiation ever float to the surface of my mind. It doesn't matter that he's at least twice my size, a whole head taller, and broader in the shoulders than even Peeta. The knife still sinks through his flesh the same as Marvel's spear propelled through Rue's chest.

Dandelion is a storm of noise, sobbing and screaming and wailing as though she is the one who has been stabbed through a collarbone. In the confusion of the fight, the man tosses her aside and lunges himself at me, diving further into the knife. Hot blood sprays upward and across my face, and his hands are slick when they find my throat. I'm too preoccupied with trying to catch my daughter to resist him or wriggle my way free. I'm frantic to reach out to her. The blanket's edge just grazes my fingertips, before the fabric slips through them as if water, and I hear Dani's _huff_ of breath as she hits the cold, hard ground.

And the sound of that knocks me breathless as well. Fury roars up inside me, quelled by the fear filling my chest, the dread closing my throat, that twang in my heart that tells me I have just failed.

A silence settles over the yard after she falls.

_Is she breathing? Did she land on her neck?_ The thoughts make me want to heave. They fill me with anger and the emotion fuels my strength. The man throws us both to the ground, and I take the impact, hard. I roll us away from the tangle of blankets that is my daughter, choking for breath, his fingers tight on my throat. Pain brings the shadow of other hands back to the surface. I think of Peeta. He's done this to me, too, years and years ago, but there is something much more cruel about the way this stranger is jerking my face violently back and forth, whipping my hair into my mouth and eyes. Each time my head clips the ground a lightning bolt of pain jolts through my temples.

Still, I fight. I take the term 'fighting tooth and nail' literally. My fingers latch onto his face – no. He's wearing a mask. My hands slip uselessly across the fabric. He presses so close my arms are pinned between our chests. His entire form swallows mine. Wildly, my legs flail underneath him, hoping to find the sweet spot all men have. Panic swells in my mouth, open now, but soundless. There's no sliver of oxygen, no scream to flow out. As soundless as my daughter..

Then motion out the corner of my eye catches my attention. Peeta's foot swings out to kick the stranger in the ribcage so hard that I swear I hear ribs crack. He grabs the man by the neck, twisting fast and hard, and the stranger turns to look up at him in time to catch a fist full in the face.

The man's grip on my windpipe loosens. Sucking in a shard of air, I take the opportunity, pushing my leg between the man's, planting my knee, then flipping us. Two hands grasp me by the hips as soon as I'm upright, and lift me into the air, tear me free of the hands, and set me down in the grass. I gulp in the air, eyes streaming. With my vision blurry and the night dark, I can hardly decipher which limb is whose as Peeta and the stranger roll around in the grass, all curled fists and knees and jerking movements for control.

Then, I hear a gasp. Struggling. A fluttering inhale that barely stirs the blanket swathe around her.

Clutching my aching neck, I scramble toward my daughter. I pull her to my chest and it is not close enough. Warm, wet tears soak into the skin of my neck, joining the blood. A bellowing so loud pushes out of her on the exhale it should have made me concerned. But even though her screaming conveys she is in pain, now, not just frightened, relief washes over me. My hand cradles her head, fingers sifting through her silky black tuft, my cheek pressed hard against her salty one. There is no obvious signs of broken bones as I fumble my hands across every piece of her. No blood. No scrapes. Nothing but the high-pitched keening pouring from her mouth, that will break her voice, surely.

Or wake Haymitch.

I see the lights flick on across the street.

I stand, stumbling, and I watch frantically as Peeta grasps the stranger by the mask and slams his head against the ground repeatedly. But the previous lamp-head collision takes its toll on Peeta. He is not so fast as he should be, not so clearheaded. The stranger surges against Peeta, flinging out an elbow that catches his face and he turns away, spitting blood. And a tooth, I think. This allows the man to get a punch in and Peeta groans, lilting into the grass.

My feet move as if to put me back into the fray. The weight of my daughter reminds me I can't.

I search the area around us; the night is empty, obsolete, and I want to run, to place Dani somewhere safe, but I can't tear my eyes off Peeta, can't leave him here. _What if he dies while I'm away?_ The thought is ice water spreading through my veins.

Across the way I see a figure coming from Haymitch's front door. He doesn't seem hurried. _Does he think this is some marital disagreement that by misfortune brought us to the front yard?_ _A trivial argument between his 'kid' star-crossed lovers?_ Anger churns in me, and I want to scream now, with my daughter. Not in incoherent terror, but directed at the lazily approaching shadow with a few _choice_ words thrown in.

Except that is not me. I've been here before, in these situations. Where my loved ones are threatened and death is a presence close and promising. I swallow the urge. Backing away to the front porch of my Victor's house I find a cushioned chair. I place the pillow underneath a table, a safe distance from any ledge or fall. I clutch Dani painfully close before setting her gently on the soft green bed, tangled in her wet blankets, still screeching. I leave her there.

I find the bloodied knife I'd dropped a few feet away from the struggling figures of Peeta and the stranger. Its still warm. I circle around them. Back in the woods, safe inside a water-proof cover, is my bow. I wish for it. With my weapon of choice I could merely draw an arrow, aim effortlessly, and loose the sharp metal point straight into the man's heart. I would not miss, no matter which way they struggled. But it would take too much time to get the bow. I must make do with the knife, no matter how less accurate, or ineffective, it proved to be.

The silhouette of a tall, thick man falls across the wrestling pair. I look up, expecting Haymitch. The barrel of a gun greets me. I freeze. The man holding the gun wears a mask identical to the stranger who tried to smuggle my baby out the window. _Cowards_. An initial wave of unease flows through me for being so under-armed in the face of a automated weapon.

Then my eyes flicker to the front door of Haymitch's house, left wide open, swinging in the breeze.

Where this man just came from.

"No," I breathe.

At my word the two wrestling roll apart. Peeta glances my way. I'm surprised he heard me over the sound of Dani. He sees the stillness in my face and instantly pivots to the man with the gun, eyes widening at the sight. The stranger beside Peeta sees him at the same time, and lurches to his feet to stand beside him. I'm satisfied to note the blood still falling from his collarbone, and the limp in his step. If we could see it I'm certain his face is as equally battered as Peeta's.

"Who are you?" Peeta asks. Slowly, hands raised, he gets to his feet and stands near my side, a few steps ahead of me. As if readying to jump in front of me if the odds decided so. I hold fast to the blade.

"Tell your woman there to drop that knife, and maybe we'll talk."

Indignation sparks in my chest at the term '_your woman_'. At not being addressed directly.

Peeta meets my gaze. "Drop it." I don't know what he's thinking, but I know that the man who spoke doesn't have a Capitol accent. It's jarring, because I was expecting one. "Katniss," he warns when I make no move to obey.

Why? Giving in now won't help us. Then Peeta taps his leg. The fake one. Right where...

I let my fingers unclench. The knife falls at my feet and I kick it their way.

Satisfied, the armed man nods the other toward the porch, toward my daughter, and I lurch forward, forgetting my earlier resolve. Peeta grasps my arm before I can reach or even stop him. I struggle with my husband as the stranger who dropped her picks up our daughter again and makes back toward us.

"Turn around." _No!_ Somewhere in my gut I know if I turn away a bullet will find its way into the back of my head. Or worse. Dandelion's. But Peeta bodily pulls me around, his front morphed into my back. No one would shoot me that way. Still... "Get on your knees." Again, as my hands ball at my side and I grind my teeth to hold back my snarls, Peeta forces me down with heavy hands on my shoulders. "Close your eyes."

I do that myself. Darkness swims behind my eyelids. I see the yard in my mind. With all the effort I possess I focus on the sight that we would be to someone far off. Two victors kneeling in the grass, one hunched around the other as if a shell. A bawling child in the arms of two masked men. One pointing a gun at their heads.

I feel Peeta's hand span across my upper back. Five fingers drum. A second passes. Four fingers drum this time. I hear the men behind us murmuring to each other. Their words are lost to Dani's static. Three fingers drum on my back. Peeta's breath feathers my neck, urging, and my hand finds Peeta's prosthetic leg. My fingers close around the ankle, then slide against the smooth metal up his pant leg. Until I reach a small leather pouch. Two fingers skate across my neck. We both tense, readying. I screw my eyes shut tighter, holding onto the image, pinpointing where I last saw the men and where I hear them to be at that exact moment.

One finger taps my shoulder, and in an instant, Peeta is leaping aside. I stand, turn, and throw the knife I drew from his leg as straight on target as I can hope. The blade sticks with a wet audible sound.

Shock gawps the man's mouth open. He sputters blood. A cough comes with no sound, just a heave of his chest and a jump of his adam's apple that looks agonizing with the handle of the knife protruding from just above his sternum.

"Anger helps my aim," I spit, stepping forward and ripping the gun from fingers already weak.

Without a working windpipe, or lungs, the man can't answer any of the questions batting around in my mind. So, after deliberating, weighing my anger, and the fact that killing him will make the other stranger unable to call my threats bluffs.. I raise my arm, press the barrel into the man's forehead, and shoot. He collapses in a heap.

The one holding my daughter doesn't move to prevent or even blink at the loss. I point the gun between his eyes.

"Hand her over," I say. He does so, and Peeta instantly envelopes her. He is cooing. In front of our enemy. I frown, but am still glad to hear him quiet Dandelion to more human sounding sobs.

While he gets to melt into a nurturing father again, I steel myself. I force the stranger to meet my gaze, hopefully hard. "Who are you?" My voice breaks, and broaches no patience. "Answer honestly, or you'll join your friend."

"Just a boy."

"Your name," I clarify.

'The boy' pursues his lips. I take a step forward, clicking a bullet into place. Except he is unconcerned and turns his head listlessly to the side.

Two figures are exiting Haymitch's house. One dragging the other. I know for certain the limping form scrambling over the pavement is my old mentor's. In my moment of distraction, the boy lunges at me. He grasps me by the elbow, twists, and forces the gun from my hand.

Peeta is at my shoulder suddenly, grave, and we both stare blankly at the weapon.

"Should have just shot you," I mutter.

"Silence, woman!" He seems irritated. As if the fact that I dared ask him questions and demand answers to them was crossing a line.

A third masked man steps up to the corpse of the one I shot. He kicks it over, still holding Haymitch by the hair. He tuts. "Pathetic."

"It was the woman," the boy supplies.

"Even worse."

On Haymitch's shoulder I can see where someone shot him. His face is screwed into a grimace of pain and anger. I catch his eye, hoping maybe in this dire moment he could offer advice or explanation. They're dazed. Of course.

"What do you want?" Peeta asks, exasperated. He holds Dani pressed against my back, hidden. And the effort is fruitless. The third man lets go of Haymitch's hair, to slump against the grass, and then circles us.

I feel like an animal on display. I have no pants still. Blood from the boy's stabbing crusts on my face, neck, and in my hopelessly tangled hair. A strand twists in the breeze against my cheek and the man comes closer to my side, so close I can smell his rank breath. Inhaling deeply, the man leans toward my face and tugs the strand loose. I don't imagine the way he drags the end of my hair over his lips. The mask leaves them bare, I realize, and I identify that they are chapped and his teeth rotten or missing (once more not something any normal Capitolite would possess), but full despite that and a light carmel color.

"This one is small. Too skinny." Disgust bubbles in my stomach, at his closeness, at his words. Peeta stiffens behind me. "But I'd still have her. What do you think, boy?" His words are crude.

The boy licks his own pale lips. "Yes."

Peeta's hand snakes around my side. I glimpse his bruised face with streaks of blood falling from his glass-cut scalp, and his left eye is beginning to swell. But no longer grave, it's hard and his jaw is clenched so tight it should snap.

An uproarious laughter breaks passed the third man's lips, spraying spit on my cheek. He drops my hair, and shoves into Peeta's shoulder, taking the baby. I strike out to grab her back -

_Bang!_

Peeta rips me down, bent at the waist and pulls me underneath him, tucked like a chick in a mother bird's wing. I barely have time to register a gun has gone off. Again, presumably directed at Peeta's reaction, gruff laughter rings out. Dandelion begins bawling, both because she is no longer with her father and the gunfire startled her

"Stand up," the boy snaps, and we do. He has the gun raised over his head, pointed to the stars. "One more move out of line and the next shot _won't_ miss."

The third man paces back to the front, standing next to Haymitch. By that time our mentor has managed to push himself somewhat upright. Dani's cries turn to whimpers as the man begins stroking her face. "Ah, looks just like your woman." He's talking to Peeta now. Not once have any of them talked to me, except when I forced the boy, and he seemed upset afterward. In fact, a little embarrassed. "Shame that it's a girl. Can't get a boy on her, can you?"

Peeta doesn't dignify that with an answer.

"No matter. You'll have time." The third man looks up from Dandelion to smile at us, flashing gums and brown teeth. "We're not here to kill you."

"Then what do you want?" I hiss.

His eyes flick to me and he frowns. I wait to be admonished for speaking out. Before that can happen Peeta pulls me in at the waist and asks, voice strenuously calm, "Why are you here?"

Both men share a smile. Unease rises in my gut like butterflies with drooping, heavy wings, filling my chest, making it both unbearably tight and warm. If they are not here for _us_, that leaves only two others.

Cradling Dandelion in one arm, the man's other unfurls with the gun, aimed directly at Haymitch's head.

This time, he does look at me.

"Choose."


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

_Choose. _The word sends a white hot spring of anger through my body. Live wire energy tethers me to the gun, hovering over Haymitch's temple. Urging me toward them, screaming: _no, no, no._

"You have sixty seconds."

"_Sixty_ – " I begin to snarl. Peeta silences me with a squeeze of his arms around my waist.

"There has to be another way. A deal we could make." Of course he would try that. Some civil exchange. But I know that's not going to work. These men are savage. They bring memories of Careers in the arena painfully to the surface of my memory. Cato, Marvel, Clove... Brutus.. Cashmere.. Gloss..

But worse. Much_ worse._

"Already made a deal, no time for another. Choose."

Dani's face is pressed into the man's chest, oblivious. Pulsing in my stomach is my anger, my disgust at the idea.. I remember her mere months of life. Her first days. Constant crying. Small, hot lips suckling at my breast. Downy skin, hair black as a raven, Peeta's eyes.

I must be staring desperately at her, because it's Haymitch who speaks next. "Me. They'll choose me."

"No," Peeta says hastily. "No, we won't."

"Then the baby," the boy amends, reaching for her.

I make a sound without meaning to. Some strangled cry, anguished and angry. "No!" Eyes fly to me. Each pair leaves a different impression on my skin, burning their marks; scornful, disappointed, pleading. Worst is Haymitch's stare, that I hold, that if I blink I'm sure that the attention I've gained will slip through my fingers like wet sand in the tide. I grip handfuls of my shirt. To keep them from shaking. To keep them off the strange men's throats. To keep them from reaching out impulsively to the person I know I will choose.

_How can I choose? How can I choose between my daughter or my mentor? _But that's false. I know how. Real question is: _by what right do they get to make me choose?_

Stuck in my throat is a ball of heat, bulbous and sticky, making it difficult to swallow. Resignation is written across Haymitch's expression. He's accepted it, the reality. He knows me too well. He's lived a long life. Not so happy as a person could hope, but a life nonetheless. More than Dandelion has had the chance to.

Dandelion or Haymitch. A choice I never thought I'd have to make. Ever.

"You seem to be at a crossroad," the man says, amused. He passes the gun over Haymitch's forehead, pushing back a fringe of hair. Still _smiling_. "I'll give you an extra minute."

Peeta lets me go and makes forward, clearing his throat. "What if – "

"Absolutely not," Haymitch and I say in union. I grab Peeta by the wrist and try to tug him back but he won't budge. Haymitch continues on to say, "Look boy, I've lived long enough. Who knows how long I even have left. Two? Five years? I'm old, fat, and a drunk." An undercurrent of slurring is in his voice, by drink or pain, I'm unsure. "Don't be idiots. Choose me and walk away from this."

"He's right," I find myself saying. Later, I'll feel the guilt. When I die I'll go knowing Haymitch's blood is partially on my hands. Him being willing or not won't matter. It'll be there. This will always be partial my fault – it will be my decision. But later is when I'll pause to grieve, to remorse at his loss, to find his face in nightmares with all the others I've killed in my life. Right now.. "I choose him. Give me my daughter."

Peeta is appalled, and looks at me as if he doesn't know who – or _what_ – I am.

The boy laughs. "You hear this woman?"

"Unfortunately," replies the man.

Neither move. None meet my glare, or the hands I reach out with to receive Dandelion. Realization hits me, knocks me breathless. They won't let _me_ choose. It's not my answer they want.

I turn to Peeta, beseeching. "You're going to let Dandelion die?" Anger wells in me, at him, at the way his eyes dance from me and the men, uncertain. _Frightened_. "You're going to make me watch my child die when it was you I had her for in the first place? When I caved into your begging for this? When all my life you know I feared having children and watching them die?" My voice rises, and my hands ball so tight in my shirt I'm afraid it'll rip. Or I'll let go and actually strike him.

Peeta moves a hand out to rest on my shoulder, but I lean away. Something shifts in his face. The blood across it is starting to crust, and the wind brushes a red-tinged piece of hair over his forehead. Do I imagine it? A waving in his eyes. A shadow. For a moment I believe he'll have a hi-jacking moment. It hasn't happened in years, not in a violent burst – usually it is a sparse few seconds after he wakes up from a nightmare and doesn't know where he is. Before he sees me or Dani and he pulls himself away from the undertow of insanity.

"What happens depending on who we choose?" Peeta asks, voice strained. He turns to the men, shouldering me behind his back. Dismissed. I'm stung, still angry, and my eyes dance down to the stranger I had killed. The one with a perfectly useful knife sticking out of his neck.

"Well, if you choose the old man, we shoot him here and now. Then give you back your kid."

"And if I choose Dani?"

"Then the man is yours to have, and we take the kid with us."

Jolting upright, I scan the men's faces, looking for falseness. "Why?" I ask. "What do you want with her?" _Why not kill her, like Haymitch? _"Where would you go? Who are you?"

"Katniss," Peeta says, a warning.

Indignation drives me forward, shoving Peeta's shoulder aside. "Answer me."

"We don't take orders from women," the boy spits.

Haymitch bursts out a hoarse laugh. "They don't even know who we are."

"Shut your trap," the man says, shoving the gun hard against Haymitch's cheek. It'll bruise. "We know enough. Now, because I'm generous, I'll count to five and then let you decide. Starting now. One." A flash of heat falls over my body, pinpointing in my shoulders and stomach. I feel sick, panicked. "Two." I can't choose. It's not my word they wait on. I swivel around and find Peeta's gaze. "Three."

"What are you thinking?" I demand.

"That we can save both."

"No." I step forward, shaking my head. "No. No. They could be lying."

"They're not."

"...Four..."

"You want both to live? So you're going to send our daughter off with these brutes? Somewhere unknown? To make what life you have chosen for her something horrible?" There's a chance we won't find her afterward. Even if we search Panem for years, they could hide her well. They could never be found again after they walk away this night.

"Five."

Peeta speaks quickly. "I choose Haymitch. He lives." _They live._

_No!_

I lunge at the men, stopped by Peeta's grip on my shirt, ripping me back. He takes my wrists in one hand, tight, and pins me against his side, and I struggle, kicking out, shimmying. Haymitch is shouting. "Don't listen to the lad! He's an idiot. Unfit. I'm the superior male, I'm older. I say her. Kill me. Leave the babe." They pay just as much attention to him as they do me. Kicking him over in the grass, the gunshot wounded shoulder jars the ground and Haymitch lets out a howl of pain.

Ignorant to my screaming, and my fingernails catching on Peeta's arm, the men tuck their guns in the waistbands of their pants. Smiles are passed, briefly. "Thanks for doing business with us." They turn away, begin to walk down the street, carrying Dani with them.

I can't.. "Let me go!" I elbow back, catching Peeta's gut, but aside a winded breath, he doesn't let go.

I'm screaming. Haymitch is cursing. Dani starts to cry again, hearing my distress.

And low in my ear, I hear Peeta's voice. "Do you trust me?"

_After this?_ I want to shout. Except I'm abruptly taken aback to another time. Another place; the arena. We are standing alone near the lake. Gamemakers have just revoked the chance for both of us to live. There are poisonous berries hanging from my belt, an idea in my head that is dangerous and possibly idiotic. Peeta's hand is warm in mine –_ I can't kill him, I can't kill him_ – and I lean in to him and murmur, _"Do you trust me?"_

He did. He'd taken the berries in his hand and hadn't hesitated.

I go still, I stop fighting him and he releases me. I breathe heavily to keep my head from spinning, to keep my thoughts clear. A hundred feet away the men walk, slipping into shadows. I can barely make them out and my heart ticks faster, harder. If I go, I need to go now.

"I trust you." The words are rushed.

"Good. Then let them go."

Go? With our daughter? "I can't.. What if they kill her?"

"They won't. They wouldn't have gone through this whole trouble to take her alive just to kill her." His faith in that is almost disturbing. I am trying to decide who he is, eying him, fighting wave after wave of anger and irrational urges to throw a fit, to grieve a daughter that could be lost to me forever. "We'll get her back," he promises, as though reading my thoughts.

"How do you know? We don't even know who they are, or where they are going!"

"No," Peeta agrees, gravely. "But there is someone who will be able to help us figure that out."

"Who?"

"Someone high up. An old friend in government."

Haymitch snorts from where he is, staggering to his feet. In the moonlight he looks older, hair stained silvery white, shadow of a beard clinging to sagging jowls, eye sunken and shadowed, everything haggard by pain. "That was your plan? Ask the government for help?" He shakes his head, is distracted by his gunshot, and fingers the wound for a second. He cringes when he looks back up. "Should have just let me die."

"After all the times you didn't do that to us? After twice in the arena you did everything in your power not to let us" – he says _us_, but gestures to me, and I wince, knowing why – "'just die?'" Peeta folds his arms over his chest. "I wouldn't be able to live with myself."

"You wouldn't. You have to live with me, without your daughter now," I say. I reach for Haymitch's arm and pretend not to feel him shaking, letting him put his weight on me. "We have to get him to the hospital." My eyes dance over Peeta's bruised, bloody form. "And you, too."

Then I remember the thud of Dandelion hitting the ground, the silence, the fragile underside of her head. Dinner heaves in my stomach and I want to vomit. Questions infiltrate my mind, too many, scattered: _Who will take her to the hospital? Will they take care of her? Feed her? Press burning cigarettes into her skin? Toss her around like a doll? Treat her as they treated me, as a woman with no authority or respect?_

"Katniss," Peeta is saying. "Katniss. Look at me." His hands cup my face. I'm forced to look up in his eyes. A surge of hatred runs in my blood. I want to shove him away. To shout. To blame him,_ because he chose this_. "Katniss, we'll get her back. Trust me. Trust me." He kisses the side of my chin, my lips, my nose. I don't move or respond. I blink back at him.

"We'll see," I say, expressionless, turning away with Haymitch in tow. "We'll see what Gale can do." _More than you, _I think, an undercurrent of bitterness rising underneath the words. _Gale would have let Haymitch die without batting eye. He wouldn't put me through this. _"Buy the tickets. I'll make the call." We both glance at the corpse the other two left behind. The one I killed. "Take him inside. I'll search him for clues once Haymitch is checked in."

Peeta nods, unable to object. I'm in charge now. Now the men are gone. Like I'm used to.

Yet, still, as I hobble away, I feel like a girl. A child. Whose worst fear has just been fulfilled.


End file.
